Furze the Cruel

Furze the Cruel
John Trevena

Trevena John

Furze the Cruel

INTRODUCTORY

ABOUT RAINDROPS

The river of Tavy is a great mountain-carver. From its mud-holes of Cranmere to the walls of Tavistock it is a hewer of rocks. Thenceforth it becomes a gardener, raising flowers and herbs; it becomes idyllic. It goes into Arcadia. And at last it floats ships of war.

There is a story in Hebrew literature of a king called Solomon, a man reputed wise, although a fool with women, who desired to build a temple to his God. There was a tradition which forbade the use of hammer or chisel in the erection of a place of worship, because, according to the Mischna, "Iron is used to shorten life, the altar to prolong it." The stones were not to be hewn. The temple was to be built noiselessly. The narrative suggests that Solomon had the stones cut and shaped at some distance from the building site, which was a decidedly Jesuitical way of solving the problem. Myth suggests that the king sought the aid of Asmodeus, chief of the devils, who told him where he could discover a worm which would split the toughest rock. The introduction of the devil to assist in the building of the temple was no doubt of Persian origin, since Persian thought influenced Hebrew literature just as Grecian thought was later to influence that of Rome. The idea of noiseless building, of an altar created by supernatural powers, of burrowing for minerals and metals without tools, is common to the literature of every country. It is one of the stock tales of folk-lore found everywhere. In one place it is a worm which shatters the mountains; in another a black stone; and in another a herb, such as the innocent forget-me-not, and the various saxifrages of the cottage garden. All the stories agree upon three points: the name of the rock-shatterer signifies irresistible force; it is invariably a small and insignificant object; and it is brought to mankind by a bird. That bird is the cloud; and the worm, pebble, or herb, which shatters mountains is the raindrop.

This is the story of the river Tavy, its tors and cleave, just as the pixy grandmother told it to the little round-eyed ones on a stormy night, when the black-winged raven-cloud was bringing the rain over Great Kneeset, and the whist hounds were yip-yip-yipping upon the "deads" —

"It all happened a long time ago, my impets, a very long time ago, and perhaps I shan't be telling you the story quite right. They say the dates are cut upon the Scorhill Rocks. I couldn't make them out the last time I was there, but then my eyes are getting feeble. You know the Scorhill Rocks, my dears? They are just by the Wallabrook, and near our big dancing stone which the silly mortals call a tolmen. You remember how we danced there on All Hallows E'en. What a beautiful night it was, sure 'nuff! And then you went and pinched the farm maids in their beds, and made them dream of their lovers, mischievous young toads! Well, I don't blame ye, my dears. I liked a bit of a gambol when I was a winikin bit of a pisky maid myself.

"This old Dartymore was a gurt big solid mountain of granite in those days, my pretties. You can't imagine what it was like then, and I can't either. There was no grass on it, and there were no nice vuzzy-bushes to dance round, and no golden blossoms to play with, and no fern to see-saw on, and no pink heather to go to sleep in – and worse and worse, my dears, there wasn't a single pixy in those days either."

"Oh, what a funny old Dartymore!" cried the little round-eyed ones.

"It wasn't an old Dartymore, my pets. It was a brand-new one. There were no bullocks or ponies. There were no bogs and no will-o'-the-wisps. There were no stone remains for stupid mortals to go dafty over, for as you and I know well enough most of 'em are no more stone remains than any other rocks, but are just as the wind and rain made them. There was not a single mortal in those days either, and none of the triumphs of their civilisation, such as workhouses, prisons, and lunatic asylums. There was just the sun and the gurt grey mountain, and right upon the top of the mountain was a little bit of jelly shivering and shaking in the wind."

"But how did it get there?" cried the little round-eyed ones.

"Oh, my loves, you mustn't ask such silly questions. I don't know. Nobody can know. It was there, and we can't say any more. Perhaps there was a little bit of this jelly on the top of every mountain in the world. I can't tell you anything about that. But this little bit on the top of Dartymore was alive. It was alive, and it could feel the wind and the sun, and it would have kicked if it had got any legs to kick with. You will find it all written on the Scorhill Rocks. I couldn't find it, but it must be there, because they say it is. Well, this little bit of jelly shivered away for a long time, and then one day it began to rain. That was a wonderful thing in those days, though we don't think anything of it now. The little bit of jelly didn't like the rain. If it had been a pixy it would have crawled under a toadstool. If it had been a mortal it would have put up its umbrella. But toadstools and umbrellas hadn't been invented. So the poor thing shivered and got wet, because it was a very heavy shower. They say it lasted for several thousand years. While it rained the little bit of jelly was thinking. At last it said to the rain, 'Where do yew come from?' But the rain only replied that it hadn't the least idea.

"'What are ye doing?' went on the bit of jelly; and the rain answered, 'Making the world ready for you to live in.' The piece of jelly thought about that for a million years, and then it said to the wind – the rain had stopped, and it was the First Fine Day – 'Someone must have made me and put me here. I want to speak to that Someone. Can't you tell me what to do?'

"'Ask again in a million years,' said the wind.

"'I think I'll go for a walk,' said the piece of jelly. You see, my dears, it was getting tired of sitting still, and besides, it had discovered little bits of things called legs. They had grown while it had been thinking. So it got up, and stretched itself, and perhaps it yawned, and then it went for a long walk. I don't know how long it lasted, for they thought nothing of a few thousand years then; but at last it got back to the top of Dartymore, and found everything changed. The big mountain had been shattered and hewn into cleaves and tors. There were rivers and bogs; grass and fern; vuzzy-bushes and golden blooms. In every part, my dears, the mountain had been carved into tors and cut into gorges; but there were still no pixies, and no mortals. Then the piece of jelly went and looked at itself in the water, and was very much astonished at what it saw. It was a piece of jelly no longer, but a little hairy thing, with long legs and a tail, and a couple of eyes and a big mouth."

"Was it the same piece of jelly? What a long time it lived!" cried the little round-eyed ones. They didn't believe a word of the story, and they were going to say so presently.

"Well, my pretties, it was, and it wasn't. You see, little bits of it kept breaking off all those years, and they had become hairy creatures with long legs and a tail. Part of the original piece of jelly was in them all, for that was what is called the origin of life, which is a thing you don't understand anything about, and you mustn't worry your heads about it until you grow up. The little hairy creature stood beside the Tavy, and scratched its ear with its foot just like a dog. A million years later it used its hand because it couldn't get its foot high enough, and the wise men said that was a sign of civilisation. It was raining and blowing, and presently a drop of rain trickled down the nose of the little hairy creature and made it sneeze.

"'Go away,' said the little hairy creature. 'I wun't have ye tickling my nose.' You see, my dears, it knew the Devonshire dialect, which is a proof that it is the oldest dialect in the world.

"'Let me bide. I be fair mazed,' said the Devonshire raindrop. 'I've been drap-drappiting on this old Dartymore for years and years.'

"'You bain't no use. You'm only a drop o' rainwater,' said the little hairy thing.

"'That's all. Only a drop o' rain-water,' came the answer. 'This gurt big mountain has been worn away by drops o' rain-water. These tors were made by drops o' rainwater. These masses of granite have been split by drops o' rain-water. The river is nought but drops o' rain-water."

"'You'm a liar,' said the little hairy thing. You see, my dears, it couldn't believe the raindrop."

The little round-eyed ones didn't believe it either. They were afraid to say so because Grandmother might have smacked them. Besides, they knew they would not have to go to bed in the pink heather until she had finished her story. So they listened quietly, and pinched one another, while Grandmother went on —

"It was a long time afterwards. There were bullocks and ponies and plenty of pixies, and the little hairy thing had become what is called a primitive man. Tavy Cleave was very much the same as it is now, and Ger Tor was big and rugged, and Cranmere was full of river-heads. The primitive man had a primitive wife, and there were little creatures with them who were primitive children. They lived among the rocks and didn't worry about clothes. But there was one man who was not quite so primitive as the others, and therefore he was unpopular. He used to wander by himself and think. You will find it all upon the Scorhill Rocks, my dears. One evening he was beside the Tavy, which was known in those days as the Little Water, and a memory stirred in him, and he thought to himself: I was here once, and I asked a question of the wind; and the wind said: 'Ask again in a million years.' Someone must have made me and put me here. I want to speak to that Someone. Then the Little Water shouted; and it seemed to say: 'I have worn away the mountain of granite. I have shattered the rocks. Look at me, primitive man! I have given you a dwelling-place. I was made by the raindrops. The cloud brought the raindrops. And the wind brought you, primitive man. That Someone sent you and the wind together. You want to speak to that Someone. You must seek that Someone in a certain place. Look around you, primitive man!'

"So he looked, my dears, and saw what the Little Water had done during those millions of years. On the top of every little mountain it had carved out a tor. They were rough heaps of rock, shapeless, and yet suggesting a shape. They were not buildings, and yet they suggested a building. The primitive man went up on the highest tor, and spoke to that Someone. But, my pretties, I'm afraid you can't understand all this."

The little round-eyed ones were yawning dreadfully. Grandmother was getting wearisome in her old age. They thought they would rather be in bed.

"The primitive man made himself a hut-circle. You see, my dears, the Little Water had taught him. He had become what is called imitative. When he made his hut-circle he just copied the tors. Later on he copied them on a larger scale and built castles. And then the time came when another man stood beside the Tavy and asked: 'I have had dreams of treasure in the earth. How can I get at that treasure?'

"Then the Little Water shouted back: 'Look at me. I have worn away the rocks. I have uncovered the metals. Work in the ground as I have done.'

"So the man imitated the river again and worked in the ground, until he found tin and copper; and the river went on roaring just as it does now. You see, my children, there would have been no river if there had been no raindrops; and without the river no tors and cleaves, no vuzzy-bushes and golden blossoms, no ferns or pink heather, no buildings, no mortals, and no pixies. Dartymore would have remained a cold grey mountain of granite, and the piece of jelly would never have become a primitive man if it hadn't rained."

"But what is the rain doing now?" cried the little round-eyed ones.

"Just the same, my pretties. Making the river flow on and on. And the river is making the cleave deeper, and Ger Tor higher, just as it has always been doing. Only it works so slowly that we don't notice any change. Now you must run away to bed, for it is quite late, and you are gaping like young chickens. Come and kiss your old granny, my dearies, and trot away and have your dew-baths. And when you are tucked up in the pink heather don't be afraid of the black cloud and the raindrops, for they won't harm little pisky boys and maids if they're good. They are too busy wearing away the granite, and cutting the cleaves deeper, and making the mountains higher and our dear old Tavyland stronger and fresher. There, that's all for to-night, my impets. I'll tell ye another story to-morrow."

"Funny old thing, G'an'mother," whispered the little round-eyed ones, while they washed their pink toes in the dew. "She'm old and dafty."

That's the story of river Tavy and its cleave; not all of it by any means, but the pixy grandmother did not know any more. Nobody knows all of it, except that Someone who sent the wind, which swept up the cloud, which brought the rain, which wetted the piece of jelly, which shivered on the top of the big grey mountain of Dartmoor.

The pixy grandmother was right about the primitive man who wanted so much to know things. She was right when she said that the river taught him. He looked about him and he imitated. The river had made him models and he copied them. The tor to which he ascended to speak to that Someone was the first temple and the first altar – made without noise, a temple of unhewn stone, an altar of whole stones over which no man had lifted up any iron. It was the earliest form of religion; a better and purer form than any existing now. It was the beginning of folk-lore. It was the first and best of mysteries: the savage, the hill-top, and the wind; the cloud and the sun; the rain-built temple; the rain-shaped altar. It was the unpolluted dwelling-place which Hebrew literature tried to realise and failed; which philosophers and theocrats have tried to realise and failed; which men are always trying to realise and must always fail, because it is the beginning of things, the awakening of the soul, the birth of the mind, the first cry of the new-born. It is the first of all stories, therefore it cannot die; but the condition can never come again. The story of the rain-shattered rocks must live for ever; but only in the dimly-lighted realm of folk-lore.

Thus, in a sense, Peter and Mary, and the other folk to be described in these pages, are the children of the river, the grandchildren of the cloud and the rain. Ages have passed since the cloud first settled upon Dartmoor and the rain descended. Pandora's box has been opened since then, and all the heavenly gifts, which were to prove the ruin of mortals, escaped from it long ago, except hope left struggling in the hinge. What have the ignorant, passionate, selfish creatures in common with the freshness and purity of the wind and rain? Not much perhaps. It is a change from the summit of Ger Tor, with its wind and rain-hewn altar, to Exeter Cathedral, with its wind instrument and iron-cut sculpture – a change for the worse. It is a change from the primitive man, with his cry to the river, to Mary and Peter, and those who defile their neighbours' daughters, and drink to excess. A change for the worse? Who shall tell? Men cast back to primitive manners. The world was young when the properties of the fruit of the vine were discovered; and we all know the name of the oldest profession upon earth.

The river of Tavy flows on and on, dashing its rain sea-ward. Go upon the spectral mount of Ger Tor. Let it be night and early spring. Let there be full moonlight also. Hear the water roaring: "I have worn away the mountain of granite. I have shattered the rocks. Look at me, civilised man. I have made you a dwelling-place, but you will not have it. You swarm in your cities like bees in a rotten tree. Come back to the wind and the rain. They will cool your passions. They will heal your diseases. Come back to Nature, civilised man."

CHAPTER I

ABOUT THE TAVY FAMILY

"Coop, coop!" called Mary Tavy. "Cooey, cooey! Aw now, du'ye come, my dear. He be proper contrairy when he'm minded to," she cried to Farmer Chegwidden as she shook a gorse-bush, which was her shepherd's staff, towards a big goose waddling ahead of her in the path of its own selection, and spluttering and hissing like a damp firework.

"Did ever see such a goosie?" said Mary. "When I wants 'en to go one way he goes t'other. There he goes, down under, to Helmen Barton. If he lays his egg there they'll keep 'en, and say one of their fowls dropped 'en. He wun't come home till sundown. Contrairiest bird on Dartmoor be Old Sal."

"I don't hold wi' old geese," said Farmer Chegwidden. "They'm more trouble than they'm worth. When they gets old they'm artful."

"So be volks," said Mary. "Goosies be cruel human. Old Sal knows as much as we. He'm twenty-two years old. He lays an egg every month. He'm the best mother on Dartmoor, and Peter says he shan't die till he've a mind to." By her continued use of the masculine gender any one might have thought Mary was not quite convinced herself as to her goose's sex; but it was not so really. There is nothing feminine on Dartmoor except tom-cats.

Mary lived with brother Peter close to the edge of Tavy Cleave, a little way beyond Wapsworthy. There was a rough road from the village of St. Peter Tavy, passing round the foot of Lynch Tor, and ending in a bog half-a-mile further on. Ger Cottage – so named because the most prominent feature of the landscape was Ger, or Gurt, Tor – which was the home of the Tavys, the man and the woman, not the river, nor the cleave, nor the stannary town, nor the two villages of that ilk, appeared amid boulders and furze between the rough road and the gorge cut by the river. The cottage, or to be strictly accurate, the cottages, for Peter and Mary had separate apartments, which was quite right and proper, was, or were, in a situation which a house-agent would have been justified in describing as entirely detached. There was no other dwelling-place within a considerable distance. The windows looked out upon romantic scenery, which has been described in somewhat inflated language, six-syllabled adjectives, and mixed metaphors, as something absolute and unassailable; and has been compared to the Himalayas and Andes by excitable young people under commission to write a certain number of words for cheap guide-book purposes. However, the ravine of the Tavy is perhaps the finest thing of its kind on Dartmoor; and "gentle readers" who go abroad every winter have some reason to feel ashamed of themselves if they have not seen it.

When the New Zealander comes to explore England, he will, perhaps, – if he is interested in such things – write letters to such newspapers as may have survived concerning the source of the Tavy. He will probably claim to have discovered some new source which the ignorant and vanished race of Anglo-Saxons never happened on. Most people will say that the Tavy rises at the south side of Cut Hill. Others, who do not wish to commit themselves, will make the safe statement that its source is upon Cranmere. As a matter of fact the Tavy would be a very wise river if it knew its own head. By the time it has assumed any individuality of its own and received its first titled tributary, which is the Rattle Brook, it has come through so many changes, and escaped from such a complicated maze of crevasses, that it would have to be provided with an Ariadne's clue to retrace its windings to its source. In the face of general opinion it seems likely that the Tavy begins its existence rather more than two miles north of its accredited source, at a spot close to Cranmere Pool, and almost within a stone's cast of the Dart. It would be impossible, however, to indicate any one particular fissure, with its sides of mud and dribble of slimy water, and declare that and none other was the river of Tavy in extreme and gurgling infancy.

There is no doubt about the Tavy by the time it has swallowed the Rattle Brook and a few streams of lesser importance, and has entered the cleave which it has carved through the granite by its own endless erosion. It is an exceedingly self-assertive river; passing down with a satisfied chuckle in the hot months, when the slabs of granite are like the floors of so many bakers' ovens; and in the winter roaring at Ger Tor, as though it would say, "I have cut through a thousand feet of granite since I began to trickle. I will cut through a thousand more before the sun gets cold." It is a noble little river, this shallow mountain stream, the proudest of all Dartmoor rivers. More romance has gathered around the Tavy than about all the other rivers in England put together, leaving out the Tamar. The sluggish Thames has no romance to compare with that of the Tavy. The Thames represents materialism with its pleasure-boats and glitter of wealth. It suggests big waistcoats and massive watch-chains. The Tavy stands for the spiritual side. Were the god of wine to stir the waters of each, the Thames would flow with beer; good beer possibly, but nothing better; while the Tavy would flow with champagne. The Tavy is the Rhine of England. It was beside the Tavy that fern-seed could be gathered, or the ointment obtained, which opened the eyes of mortals to the wonders of fairyland. It was on the banks of the Tavy that the pixies rewarded girls who behaved themselves – and pinched and nipped those who didn't. Beside the Tavy has grown the herb forget-me-not, which not only restored sight to the blind, but life also to the dead; and the marigold which, when touched early on certain mornings by the bare foot of the pure-minded, gave an understanding of the language of birds. Many legends current upon the big Rhine occur also beside the shallow Tavy. There are mining romances; tales of success, struggles, and failures, from the time of the Phoenicians; tales of battles for precious tin; tales of misery and torture and human agony. That is the dark side of the Tavy – the Tavy when it roars, and its waters are black and white, and there are glaciers down Ger Tor. The tiny Lyd runs near the Rattle Brook, the bloody little Lyd in which the torturers of the stannary prison cleansed their horrible hands. The Rattle Brook knew all about it, and took the story and some of the blood down to Father Tavy; and the Tavy roared on with the evidence, and dashed it upon the walls of Tavistock Abbey, where the monks were chanting psalms so noisily they couldn't possibly hear anything else. That was the way of the monks. Stannary Laws and Tavistock Abbey have gone, and nobody could wish for them back; but the Tavy goes on in the same old way. It is no longer polluted with the blood of tin-streamers, but merely with the unromantic and discarded boots of tramps. The copper-mines are a heap of "deads"; and Wheal Betsey lies in ruin; but the Tavy still brings trout to Tavistock, although there are no more monks to bother about Fridays; and it carries away battered saucepans and crockery for which the inhabitants have no further use. This attention on the part of the townsfolk is not respectful, when it is remembered that the Tavy brought their town into being, named it, and has supplied it always with pure water. It is like throwing refuse at one's godfather.

The Tavy is unhappily named, so is its brother the Taw – both being sons of Mother Cranmere – if it is true their names are derived the one from the Gaelic tav, the other from the Welsh taw. The root word is tam, which appears appropriately enough in Thames, and means placid and spreading. The Tavy and the Taw are anything but that. They are never placid, not even in the dog-days. They brawl more noisily than all the other rivers in Devon. Perhaps they were so named on the lucus a non lucendo principle; because it is so obvious they are not placid. The river Tavy has a good deal of property. Wherever it winds it has bestowed its name. The family of Tavy is a very ancient one. It was rich and important once, possessing a number of rights, many valuable mines, much romance, to say nothing of towns abbeys, and castles; but, like most old families, it has decayed, and its property is not worth much now. It possesses Tavy Cleave; the villages of St. Peter and St. Mary (they were twins, exceedingly healthy in their youth, but growing feeble now); Mount Tavy, which is of no importance; Tavystoc, the fortified place upon the Tavy, which has been turned into Tavistock and has become famous, not for its Abbey, nor for its great men, but solely and simply for its Goose Fair; and Mary and Peter Tavy, who were not made of cob, or granite, or water, or tin, or any of those other things which made the fortune of the Tavy family, but were two simple animals of the human race, children of the river out of that portion of Dartmoor which it owns, two ignorant beings who took life seriously enough and were like the heather and gorse which surrounded them. Evolution has accomplished such marvels that Peter and Mary may possibly have been lineally descended from antediluvian heather and gorse; or perhaps Nature had intended them for heather and gorse, and while making them had come across a couple of shop-soiled souls which were not of much use, and had stirred them into the mixture which, after a certain treatment only to be explained by a good deal of medical dog-Latin, resulted in Mary and Peter being brought forth as divine images upon the edge of Tavy Cleave.

Peter and Mary were savages, although they would have used strange language had any one called them so. They did not display their genealogical tree upon their cottage wall. Had they done so it would have shown, had it been accurate, that they were descended from the Gubbingses, who, as every man knows, were as disreputable a set of savages as have ever lived. This pedigree would have shown that a certain young Gubbings had once run away with a certain Miss Gubbings to whom he was attached, and with whom he was probably related more or less intimately. Fearing capture, as they had conveyed from the gorge of the Lyd as much of the portable property of their connections as they could conveniently handle, the young couple assumed the name of Tavy from the river beside which they settled. They had a number of little Tavies, who, it was said, founded the villages of Peter Tavy and Mary Tavy, which good Christians subsequently canonised; and who, by intermarriage without much respect for the tie of consanguinity, or for such a form of religious superstition as a marriage service – if, indeed, they had ever heard of such a thing – became in time a rival band of Scythians almost as formidable to law-abiding commoners as their relations in Gubbings Land. Peter and Mary were direct descendants of these pleasant people. They didn't know it, however. It was just as well they were in ignorance, because knowledge of the truth might have turned their heads. The chief of the Gubbings was a king in his own land; therefore Peter and Mary would certainly have boasted that they were of royal blood; and Peter would assuredly have told his neighbours that if every man had his rights he would be occupying the throne of England. He would have gone on acquiring knowledge concerning those things which appertain unto ancient families, and no doubt would have conferred upon himself, although not upon Mary, a coat-of-arms such as a sheep in one quarter, a bullock in another, a bag of gold in the third, and in the fourth a peaceful commoner's head duly decollated, with the motto: "My wealth is in other men's goods." Peter would have become an intolerable nuisance had he known of his royal ancestry.

Mary was quite a foot taller than her brother. Peter was like a gnome. He was not much more than four feet in height, with a beard like a furze-bush, a nose like a clothes-peg, and a pair of eyes which had probably been intended for a boar, but had got into Peter by mistake. His teeth were much broken and were very irregular; here a tooth like a tor, there a gap like a cleave. In that respect he resembled his neighbours. Dartmoor folk have singularly bad teeth, and none of them submit to dentistry. They appear to think that defective teeth are necessary and incurable evils. When they are ill they send for the doctor at once; but when they have toothache they grin and bear it. Perhaps they know that dentists are mercenary folk, who expect to be paid for their labours; whereas the doctor who has any claim to respectability works solely for the love of his profession, and is not to be insulted by any proposal of payment. A doctor is a sort of wandering boon-companion, according to the Dartmoor mind. There is nothing he enjoys so much as being called from his bed on a bitter winter's night, to drive some miles across the moor that he may have a pleasant chat with some commoner who feels dull. He will be invited to sit by a smouldering peat-fire, and the proposal, "Have a drop o' cider? you'm welcome," will fall gratefully upon his ears. He will be encouraged to talk about certain ailments, and to suggest remedies for the same. Then he will be pressed to finish the crock of cider, and be permitted to depart. After such hospitality he would be a base-minded man if he made any suggestion of a fee. Peter had often consulted a doctor, but he could not remember ever parting with cash in return for advice. The doctor could not remember it either.